Lazy man's questions

[Guest]

OK folks, freely admit I'm being lazy here. Also, I'm not being judgemental towards anyone else with this.

One of the reasons I only made brief fory into salt was the fact (at the time) that I didn't feel the saltwater industry was environmentally responsible. Almost every thing came from stressed-out reefs that I personally would rather see protected. Stuff in tanks is great, but not if its home habitat is under seige.

However, while doing basically no research on the subject, I get the feel from posts here that a LOT more stuff (LR, many inverts especially) is bein aquacultered these days.

I would love to hear about progress on aquaculture, captive breeding, and other advances made in the saltwater industry.

Links are good, but any summary type posts would be cool too.

Thanks folks,

CC

 

[SW Beginner]

May want to look at www.tampabaysaltwater.com as a start.

 

[Bang Guy]

Aquacultured items in my reef tank system:

Banggai Cardinals
True Percula pair
Neon Gobies
Clown Gobies
Squamosa Clams
300 pounds of live rock
3000 pounds of live sand (dry weight)
Queen Conch (8)
Spotted Conch (100's)
Stomatella Snails (1000's)
All Corals in my tank were from frags bought/traded/donated from fellow hobbiests or hitchhiked from the rock.

 

[michealprater]

the reefs are dying of without any explination. starting a saltwater tank responcibly is accually doing your part to save the reefs of the world. just my opinion.

 

[reefrunner69]

As has been noted, you can get just about anything having to do with the reef hobby as aquacultured specimens. There are lot's of tank raised fish species (mostly clowns) available these days, as well as a revolutionary concept of captive reared fish. The difference is that rather than attempting to breed some species in tanks, they collect the fertilized eggs or newly hatched fry and rear them captively. This is great because most of these eggs/fry would be food for other creatures. Of the thousands/millions of fertilized eggs produced in the ocean only a small percentage reaches adolesence. I am also encouraged by the amount of aquacultured corals that are out there. Most reefers have to get rid of frags, so the corals do not out grow the tanks, the frags are a heartier specimen already adapted to the captive environment. There are still alot of wild caught specimens out there, more than tank raised or tank reared, mostly due to cost, but the time is coming when tank raised is all that will be available. Hopefully the time is even closer when tank raised is what is demanded. It is really not a hard choice to make. Take clowns for instance...Wild caught clowns have a high mortality rate, of the clowns harvested probably 80% die within a month of capture. Tank raised clown on the other hand, have a very low mortality rate, of the clowns offered for sale, I'd say less than 5% die within 6 months of entry into the aquarium. Tank raised is about 1.5-2 X as expensive as wild caught. So do we pay the extra for a fish that will live, or do we spend less on a fish that will most likely die in our tank?

 

[Guest]

Thumbs up to the saltwater industry! It's really good to hear that the hobbiests and professionals are doing SO much better than 10-15 years ago.